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Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2005 > November > 02
Wednesday, November 2, 2005
MSM hijacks the Carnival of Education!
Welcome to to the first-ever Mainstream Media edition of the Carnival of Education! Sure, blogging is supposed to be under the radar, snubbed by traditional media outlets. But not all of us in the MSM have overlooked you.
I started Get on the Bus in August, inspired by conversations with uber blogger Dan Gillmour and education journalism guru Richard Colvin about the power of blogging as a tool to inform education reporting.
The Carnival has been a great learning opportunity for me, and your posts have been both inspiring and informative.
Next week, they’ll be doing the midway back at The Education Wonks. The deadline is next Tuesday, November 8th by 9:00 PM (Pacific). Email submissions to owlshome [at] earthlink [dot] net
So let’s get going. To start out, I wanted to highlight a few friends in the MSM you may not know about in a brief MSM editor’s choice round up.
The first MSM ed blog, and in my view still the best, was launched early this year by Patti Ghezzi, an education reporter at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Patti’s blog, Get Schooled, has a following that most of us would kill for — I’ve seen her get more than 200 comments on her best posts.
This week, she got a mere 65 comment for this post comparing the attitude in American schools to that of school in other countries, especially China.
Another MSM pal, Bruce Buchanan, covers and blogs about education for the Greensboro (N.C.) News-Record. In this post from Chalkboard, he discusses North Carolina’s controversial plan to boost teacher pay over the next three years.
Ex-MSM journalist Jenny D asks this tough question — can having a education weblog hurt your career? This worry probably keeps more academics, and I suspect also other MSM journalists, from blogging.
In fact, the MSM really doesn’t yet understand blogging, which is why, as Tim at AssortedStuff points out, newspapers are more likely to write stories that focus on everything that is scary about blogging, rather than the incredible opportunities blogs offer. This also is probably part of the reason why there’s only a few of us out here ed blogging from the MSM.
Another ex-MSM journo, Joanne Jacobs analyzes a recent study of what works and what doesn’t in low income schools in California. And the results may surprise you.
So, does it mean you’ve arrived as a blogger if somebody sends you a cease-and-desist message for using their logo? If so, Alexander Russo has officially arrived, courtesy of the Council of Chief State School Officers. While you’re over at This week in Education, check in on Alexander’s pet project, mapping the education blogosphere. Make sure you’re listed!
And I’d humbly suggest my own post, inspired by Jenny D’s recent debate with the author of Schools Matter over testing. I ask can we trust the data we’re getting from standardized tests? If nothing else, check out this example from a series I co-wrote last year of what can go wrong when we automate test scoring, even for student essays.
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Carnival, part 2
SURVIVAL GUIDE FOR PARENTS AND TEACHERS
Jane Young at An Educational Voyage points us to a valuable resource for protecting children from sex offenders.
At Jones Blog, she tells the amazing story of a close friend’s personal struggles to become a success. Hang with this post to the end. It’s worth it.
Suppose you were a teacher and found out only after one of your students was expelled that he was a potential threat to your personal safety? Don’t you think would have liked to have known that sooner? Polaski3 does.
Jane takes a shot at narrow-minded parents over at Sheiss Weekly. Then she takes a bonus swipe at schools that were dumb enough to ban books.
SpunkyHomeSchool has some ideas for parents quoted in a USA Today story who discover their teenage kids have personal blogs that contain scary stories about sex and partying but mom and dad say they don’t know what to do with the information.
Editor’s choice: Anyone who has ever been in a school knows (and probably secretly wanted to choke) one of these kids. She’s the straight A student who tracks her GPA down to the .0001 and pesters the teacher for extra credit anytime she begins to slip close to an A-. Josh at Multiple Mentality explores the strange motivations of the “eager beavers”.
EDUCATION POLICY
Jerry at My Short Pencil provides a thoughtful analysis of New York’s state exams in light of the state’s performance on the NAEP that begs the question, are New York’s exams challenging enough?
Don’t you love education jargon? You’d think being a Super Freshman or a Super Sophomore would be a good thing. The Science Goddess explains it’s not.
Does President Bush’s education policy, as much as his Supreme Court selections, demonstrate that social conservatives are “hapless GOP dupes?” Eduwonk thinks so.
One of the chief challenges for a school, particularly a diverse school, is dealing with the cultural differences between what kids experience at home and the behaviors expected at school. At Right on the Left Coast Darren takes on the notion that schools must adapt their cultures to please everyone rather than training the kids in the culture of the school.
If you are in California, Radagast’s post deconstructing proposition 76 is a must read at the Rhosgobel blog.
In an op-ed in the local paper, two retired college professors argue in favor of tenure and at Friends of Dave they ask — is this news?
Mrs. Cornelius has come out with a radical idea, one she suspects will draw the ire of the NEA — she proposes … that bad teachers should be fired. Gasp!
Can you think of anything more ridiculous than a law requiring kids to wash their hands after lunch? At School Matters they can’t either.
Rhymes with Right, meanwhile, is trying to understand the actions of Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University.
At Crossblogging they have a run down of where the Illinois gubernatorial candidates stand on Intelligent Design.
Editor’s choice: I like it when bloggers try out new ideas. Blogger Ed Wahoo got a good one — blog brainstorming. He wants us all to post our suggestions for what is the single most important reform needed in America today. I can’t wait to see the list.
And at Going to the Matt, they’ve already got an idea for Ed Wahoo — make school more like the real world.
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Carnival, part 3
TEACHING AND LEARNING
Are you just dying to give Margaret Spellings a piece of your mind? Or do you just have a burning question you’d like to ask her? Well, The Education Wonks prove you can. They did. And she answered! And here’s a bonus post from the Wonks looking at Denver, where the union gave its blessing to merit pay.
At me-ander, an English-teacher blogger in Israel suggests how you can use your computer to experience what it’s like to be dyslexic.
The Ruminating dude explores the dark side of teaching, especially the promise that schools will prepare all kids for college. He says the reality falls far short.
At MathandText, J.D. takes us down a path to understanding why math textbooks fall short when it comes to connecting math concepts and he does it using nice real world examples.
Imagine, a smart aleck superintendent! In Indiana, they’ve got one who posts at the Super’s Blog and this week he hilariously imagines a merger between a textbook company and Cliff Notes in the interest of keeping literature passages brief for the MTV generation.
Quincy at News, the Universe and Everything has some answers for how improved schools of education can make for better teaching.
It’s a stealth SEVENTH class Mr. Lawrence’s school requires that’s driving him crazy at Get Lost, Mr. Chips.
At Scholar’s Notebook, they highlight a parent’s frustration with a principal who says “In middle school, the product doesn’t matter.”
In the Common Room, the Headmistress points out how boring and unchallenging college can be, and asks, higher education means higher than what?
Editor’s choice:Want to see how a good teacher translates her daily life into a science lesson? Mrs. Frizzle’s post about her commute to work in the Bronx also demonstrates how good teachers are always thinking about how to make schoolwork more relevant to kids.
Quick aside: My favorite teacher blogger, also NY-based Mr. Babylon, recently decided to take a hiatus and it’s killing me. I need my fix. Come on, hombre, hurry back!
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